The divorce rate among adults 50 and older doubled between 1990 and 2010.

In contrast, the divorce rate for the population as a whole has stayed flat or maybe even declined slightly.

This group of older adults was responsible for 1 in 4 divorces in the US in 2010.

Since 1990, the prevalence of divorce among older adults has increased, and the prevalence of widowhood has declined.

The authors are careful to note the difference between “prevalence” and “incidence.” Prevalence of divorce measures the marital status of a person at a point in time but does NOT tell us when the divorce occurred. That’s where “incidence” comes in. So a higher prevalence of divorce among older adults could result from a higher incidence of divorce, but it could also indicate a reduced tendency to remarry after a divorce that occurred in the past.

It’s difficult to know what all this means. We know older adults are more likely to be divorced, but we don’t know why. One possible contributor is that older Americans are 50% more likely to be in a remarriage than they were 20 years ago, and the incidence of divorce in remarriage is 2.5 times higher than in a first marriage.

What we can say with some confidence is that more older Americans are going to be living alone, and we can infer – particularly in the case of divorced men – that many of them will be estranged not only from their former spouse but sometimes also from their children. This will place added burdens on public institutions and also on family ties.

I’m not sure where this fits in, but it’s my site so I can just say that I am aware of two cases where a divorced and remarried woman served in a lengthy caregiving relationship with her divorced husband. In one case the woman spent weeks away from her husband caring for her ex-husband as he died of cancer. The marriage appears to have survived, but it had to be strained.

4 comments

This was an interesting read, and I like the fact that you pointed out that there’s going to be strain put on public institutions that care for an aging, divorced population. One thing I don’t understand is why widowhood rates have declined ; care to give your inferences on this piece of data?

Not really, other than to point out the same reasoning the study authors did. As the prevalence of divorce rises, it naturally pushes down the prevalence of widowhood. As a parallel, imagine a population of 100 people who love iced tea and only iced tea and that 50% of them prefer sweet tea. The prevalence of sweet tea drinking is 50%. If the prevalence of sweet tea preference rises to 60%, that automatically causes the prevalence of unsweetened tea preference to fall.

I don’t have any statistics or research on this, just anecdotal observation. My anecdotal observation from talking to a handful of women divorcing in their 50s and 60s is that they’ve finally decided they can divorce with a minimum of damage or injury to their family (including their STBX). It’s always possible, of course, that the ubiquity of the Internet played some part in that growing awareness.